Balloons are ubiquitous at a wide variety of events including political conventions, dances, children's birthday parties, fairs, and sales at car dealerships. Balloon displays often require large numbers of balloons, each of which has to be filled. Various methods may be employed to fill balloons. An individual may blow up and tie each balloon by hand or use a tank of compressed air or helium to inflate the balloon, which then has to be tied. These can be quite time-consuming tasks. Additionally, balloons may be damaged or filled to different volumes. Due to the drawbacks of these methods, machines are often used to fill balloons.
The prior art contains several machines for filling balloons. U.S. Pat. No. 3,380,490 discloses a balloon vending machine having balloons fixed by their necks in a flexible loop which is advanced at a turning point. As the loop advances, an uninflated balloon passes into a compartment, where a nozzle comes into contact with the balloon and fills it. A user then removes the balloon, which may have a check valve in the neck to prevent gas escaping from the balloon, and the loop continues to advance.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,536,110 discloses a balloon vending machine with uninflated balloons contained in a flexible conveying belt. The balloons each have check valves in the neck of the balloon. When a balloon in the belt reaches a rest station, a nozzle is attached to the balloon and the nozzle/balloon apparatus travels to a filling station where the balloon is filled. When the balloon is filled, the nozzle is retracted and returned to the rest station. The inflated balloon is ejected from the belt at the filling station.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,067,301 discloses a balloon filling machine having plates with open-ended slots to hold a balloon's neck. The plates are driven by a conveyor loop. A filling head is attached to the neck of the balloon and the balloon is filled. This machine also has means for stretching, twisting, and sealing the neck of the balloon.
All of the prior art discussed here provides a mechanism where uninflated balloons must be physically attached to elements of the machine before filling occurs. This is potentially time-consuming and costly. It is an object of this invention to provide a removable media to which balloons may be attached at the point of manufacture of the media rather than at the point of filling the balloons.
All of the prior art described above requires complex machinery with many moving parts. It is an object of this invention to provide a simple yet precise mechanism for filling balloons.